HEROIN, Part III: Kicking it takes everything you've got

Marc leaned back and sunk against the red couch. It took a few years to even realize and admit that he is an addict. “I am an addict, till I was able to admit it, I couldn’t fix myself.”

Marc had struggled with drugs and the law for quite some time. In 2009 he was arrested for marijuana, shortly after that is when he started his runs. He had struggled with heroin for over three years. But it originally started with the abuse of Vicodin and Percocet, which he took recreationally on the weekends. He started moving from pills to doing 10 bags of heroin a night on the weekends and drinking and smoking throughout the week.

Getting the heroin was extremely easy – he was able to get it from a girl who lived in Branchburg. But once he started working in Newark, he would pick up heroin on his way home. He went to a rehab called Somerset Treatment Center, he managed to stay clean for about six months but he was still continuing to drink.

Things started looking up when he started dating a girl who he shared a common bond of wanting to be sober from weed.

“I was replacing my addiction with her and alcohol,” he said. His life started spiraling downwards when he found out that his girlfriend was smoking behind his back, so he gave her an ultimatum. He remembers the exact moment when he let his addiction win. He was driving in his beat-up truck trying to figure out what to do. He wanted to do the right thing, but his addiction — the tiny person on his shoulder — was telling him to cave, as he described it.

“That day I (expletive) myself by trying to compromise. Shortly after I started smoking, which lead to doing coke and after that everything went downhill big time; things got real bad.”

He started getting a lot of injuries, broken leg, elbow, forearm and even burns. He was given prescription pills for the pain, but he was also snorting heroin. His best friend was the one who normally sold him weed, and once he started selling heroin, marc had convenient access to it at all times.

While he was at work he was using a blowtorch with the cast still on his arm. Hot liquid aluminum leaked inside his cast, leaving him with huge burns, and he almost lost his pinky. He was sent to Medemerge where he was giving dilaudid, which is like morphine.

“That’s when my addiction was playing games with me.”

Next they sent him to St. Barnabas hospital where he was asked if he was given anything for pain. “For a split second I thought about telling the truth, but instead I lied and told them only ibuprofen.” As a result he was given a second dose of pain medication through a shot.

He was given prescription pills to take home to help with the pain and he was able to refill them every week. However, this led to doing heroin every day.

“I thought if I’m going to do opiates, I’m just going to get heroin. I get myself in trouble because I like to do things big.”

He was doing things he normally wouldn’t do but the drugs were powerful. He had stolen 30 bags of heroin from his best friend, went home and did them all in his basement. Every time he got up he would do more, and he did strange things like walking around outside in his boxers yelling at his family, would turn the sink on in the bathroom and just stare at it for long periods of time.

He had lost his grip of reality and for four days he can’t remember everything that happened. He was trying to kill himself in order to escape his addiction and the shame, disgust and guilt that he felt.

His mom caught on that something was wrong.

“My mom walked in my room and said ‘What’s wrong with you?’ I said I need help.”

He went to a rehab but his insurance only covered a detox, and after that he was sent back home. He was determined to not go back down that path, because he had been in such a dark place and he didn’t want to feel like that ever again. He started to regularly go to NA meetings, and stopped doing things like drinking and smoking. “The best thing is to stay away from things that will make me use.”

As of June 21, he has been clean and sober for one year.

Although he’s determined to stay clean, he has to try and fight his addiction forever. Even when he’s old and gray and has been clean for many years, he is going to have to continue to work to stay that way.

“If I get hurt I’m going to have to fight to refuse prescription pills, and even be careful with something as simple as Nyquil.”

Addiction is an ongoing battle even for those who have managed to get clean “Every single day I think about it — it’s on my mind. I find there are always things that seem to be testing me to give into it.”

He says that life is hard enough as it is, and he has to fight to not succumb to his addiction.